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On October 4th, 2015, CAAV Steering Committee Co-chairperson Joni Grady delivered this heartfelt sermon to her congregation at the Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists Church. It is a message of hope with spot-on descriptions of many of Joni’s fellow, local, passionate, climate warriors.

Welcome to another step in my attempt to make sense out of an increasingly irrational world. When I picked the title, Reality Check, I had a rather different talk envisioned, one dealing only with the painful bifurcation of my life and the lives of everyone involved to any extent with that most dreadful task, saving the only livable planet we seem to have. In one part of my life, the dreaming world, we try to remember to vacuum the rugs and take out the trash, put money into Sophie’s college savings and reserve a beach house for Christmas. In this world, which seems so familiar, so pleasant, a bad problem is not finding the type of tea I like at Martin’s or getting stuck at too many red lights. A serious issue means the AC has gone out and the mattress needs replacing. And a tragedy would of course be sickness or death amongst family or friends. In this world, mainstream media news means killings, wars, politicians and celebrities. Sometimes on the front page or at the top of the hour but usually hidden on the inside or never heard or shown at all are floods, heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and storms. These, thank goodness, are simply “acts of God” that come and go randomly around the world but, happily, rarely in the Peaceful Valley. (Or at least that’s what I thought until Tuesday when the dreaming world intersected the waking world and an unusual (new normal?) storm dropped 4 inches of rain and a lot of it ended up in my basement.) Both worlds were interrupted by an actual Reality check!!

Normally, in the other, equally real, weirding-climate, waking world that I also live in 24/7, the minor day-to-day issues revolve around making sure there are enough materials for tabling at the Farmers Market, getting out the word for various events and keeping the CAAV facebook page up-to-date. (CAAV, for those new to the area, is the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley.) The more complicated ones involve designing a display to draw people in at the International Festival when they really just want to eat and have fun, not be bothered by inconvenient truth, and planning next month’s educational forum (which is, in case you’re interested, the inside story on fighting western forest fires, from training to living in camp to the actual hard and very dirty work of controlling a wildfire, brought to us by Sophie’s dad Alan Williams.) And the news I read is all climate, all the time: some good, some bad, some optimistic, some terrifying.

The difficult part is to do these things in the presence of the dreamers who inhabit the first world, the ones living in a trance from which they will only awaken, possibly, when disaster strikes them personally. And when I really feel sorry for myself, I can feel even worse when I read the hate mail, the threats, the obscenities that are thrown at the scientists, the real climate warriors—even though I know these are written from the nightmare world of conspiracy belief inhabited by the DNR editor and James Inhofe. When I think about the Syrian and other climate refugees dying to escape a part of the world no longer viable, and envision that small part growing and expanding to affect and engulf us all, I get so depressed I want to give it all up and go back to sleep –to sleep, perchance to dream.

This kind of thinking is a real recipe for burn out and serious depression and recently, all the advice from Marcus Aurelius and Rev. Gingrich to just “keep on working” didn’t seem to help. Probably I should get therapy! But I didn’t. I simply decided to step back, take a new position and get a different perspective on the situation. The events of the past week actually helped me get some perspective on both worlds. In the middle of even this minor climate-related hardship, I found myself so absorbed with the nitty gritty of sticky orange silty water all over my floor that I rarely thought about what CAAV or 350 or Sierra Club are planning for this fall leading up to the Paris climate conference. No wonder most people, who don’t have my privileged leisure time, don’t worry very far into the future. On the other hand I began to get a real, though tiny, inkling of what regular life is like now in many places. And I found, through the kindness of friends, relations, and total strangers, that there is always hope and help, and even a hug from the IHOP cashier.

Sure, our work with CAAV probably seems trivial to most people, but it’s a way to work on one little cog, to hope there are so many little cogs and gears beginning to mesh and so many incredible people in the world working on them that a massive engine of change is being built with the leverage to move the world. There are people I might never have known about, much less met, without my totally unexpected immersion in this, the second, the waking world. These are not the usual suspects like Ralph and the Sierra Club, though goddess knows we couldn’t do without them, but people you may not know at all or know in a different context.

Valerie Serrels and her twin sons Grant and Garret helped found iMatter Youth, a group that dared to sue the United States on the basis that every citizen has the right to a place on a safe livable planet—what gall they have!

Jeff Heie and Earl Martin are Mennonite builders who are part of a volunteer group that renovates homes for low-income folks and whose Voluntary Gas Tax group assess themselves for the CO2 they burn each year. This year they raised enough for a $5000 grant to launch a major solar power project for the Gift and Thrift shop along Mt. Clinton Pike.  And anyone who wants can donate $200 and buy a panel to help out.

Lynn Cameron and the Friends of Shenandoah Mountain try to protect and preserve our highlands and Rev. Kate Lehman and the other Riverkeepers protect our waters. Lynn learned, and tried to teach me, that working with a wide range of stakeholders on a problem takes finesse, patience, and a willingness to listen to all points of view—I haven’t learned it yet, but she has tried.

Wayne Teel, Rob Alexander and Jeff Tang teach their JMU students what’s going on and aren’t afraid that the truth will be too scary for their tender young minds, Amy Thompson does the same in Bridgewater. And there are so many folks at EMU who work from their hearts to get to the heart of the problem, even if it takes them into the halls of the Pentagon, like Dr. Lisa Shirch, our last CAAV speaker.

Through CAAV I have gotten to know students at JMU and EMU who have already decided to devote their lives to solving the problem and are working right now to get JMU and EMU to divest from fossil fuels. Others are working with CAAV to bring inexpensive solar power to the Valley. And there are our staunch supporters led by Mark Fink at CourtSquare Theatre who are willing to work with us whenever we want to bring provocative films to town.

I love the “creation care” people who have worked so hard to wake up their congregations and the ministers across the Valley, people like Ramona and Bill Sanders, the Reverend David Miller, Bill Rosenow, David Pruett and Michael Snell-Feikema. Doug Hendren and the Occupy Harrisonburg contingent, and the farmers such as Bobby Whitescarver and others in the Valley Conservation Council all understand that economy and ecology are part and parcel of the same thing. Without a livable planet how would any of us make a living?

When I decided to try some grass-tops organizing to promote the free weatherization of low-income houses, Karen Thomas, Stan Macklin, the inimitable Doris Allen and all of the NorthEast Neighborhood Association welcomed me into their midst and made me feel at home. Jamie Miller from New Bridges helps our new immigrant neighbors with the application forms for getting their homes weatherized.

I’m proud to call April Moore and Andy Schmookler friends and compatriots, two with the courage to run for political office against entrenched politicians with ties to the big money interests of fossil fuels. Again, what nerve! ?! I now know and work with lawyers and architects like Bishop Dansby, Tom Domonoske and Charles Hendricks who stick their necks out in city council and the school board meetings, trying to prepare Harrisonburg for the 21st century. And they do this with the help of committed public servants like Thanh Dang and our old HUU friend Kai Degner. I’ve learned from Bish that it doesn’t hurt to write perfect strangers and ask them for information or help—which explains why I’m the unlikely pen pal of an ex-Oxford Univ. professor and expert in product branding!

The core of my support is my own favorite bunch of wide awake people, the steering committee of CAAV: Cathy started it all, Charlie cares so much that he risked his health in a protest fast last week. Rickie Wertz is our secretary and in from the beginning. Anne Nielsen, artist, biologist, educator, may know even more Valley folk than Cathy; Lynn Smith loves art and children’s books as much as I do and creates wonderful displays; our Chairperson Laura Dansby is willing to lead her legislative committee into conversations with the unwilling and still remain calm, cool, and collected; Adrie Voors is a climate refugee from Katrina and a veterinarian who loves animals even more than people and who inspires my social media work with her own great talent as webmaster. Joy Loving almost single-handedly started the solar revolution in Harrisonburg and now has her sights set on Rockingham, Page and Shenandoah counties. Carl Droms is treasurer and how many other mathematicians do you know would put on a polar bear suit to draw attention to the melting Arctic ice and march around Main St.? Pete Mahoney is our spiritual leader whose goodness and perseverance inspires us all, and our newest, youngest, members, Emily Blake and Alleyn Harned are teaching by example that renovating old buildings has a much lower carbon footprint than building new. And obviously there’s Les, whom I forget to tell how much his support and hard work mean to me and how much I admire the way his brain works, not skimming the surface like mine, but delving deep and really learning and sharing the complexities of this horrible mess we’re in.

Others I can’t name here are all just as important because they are willing to be awake and face real life, whether or not they work with us directly. Some come regularly to our events, our forums, our movies, our tables, some just check out our website and Facebook page or receive our weekly round-up of the best and worst climate news. I would never in a million years have gotten to meet so many passionate, committed men and women, if I hadn’t begun working with the gang at CAAV. These are people who are too busy to stay depressed for long and being around them buoys my spirits too. And this is just my local disrupted-climate community, strands and nodes in an interconnected web of concern. The web stretches across the state, across the country and around the world. It is made up of activists, scientists, artists, politicians and statesmen, CEOs and volunteers, mothers and fathers, children and elders, writers of fiction and creators of documentaries, Bangladeshis and Inuit, UUs and Evangelicals and even, would you believe, a pope! What a grand group of people who have decided that, for the good times and the bad times too, let it be a dance!

References (in order of appearance, and just a few of the many working in the area)

1. Climate Action Alliance of the Valley: www.climateactionallianceofthevalley.org and www.facebook.com/caavva to get announcements of events, the Weekly Roundup of top climate news, and minutes of our open public meetings, subscribe to our listserv at contactcaav [at] gmail.com

2. Sierra Club: http://www.sierraclub.org/virginia/shenandoah

3. iMatter Youth: www.imatteryouth.org

4. Voluntary Gas Tax: www.voluntarygastax.org

5. Friends of Shenandoah Mountain: www.friendsofshenandoahmountain.org

6. Riverkeepers/Waterkeepers: http://www.waterkeeperschesapeake.com/about-us/resources/item/56-shenandoah-riverkeeper

7. Wayne Teel: http://www.isat.jmu.edu/people/teel.html

8. Rob Alexander: http://www.jmu.edu/polisci/faculty_alexander.shtml

9. Jeff Tang, Associate Dean of the College of Integated Science and Engineering, was instrumental in starting the Harrisonburg/Rockingham Green Network. H/RGN is made up of representatives of various environmental/climate groups, and meets monthly to keep an eye on projects to improve the sustainability and resilience of the area.

10. Amy Thompson: https://www.bridgewater.edu/about-bc/faculty-students/amy-thompson . CAAV Speakers Bureau member Les Grady regularly visits her geology class to talk about climate change.

11. Lisa Schirch: http://www.emu.edu/personnel/people/show/schirchl

12. Doug Hendren: https://www.facebook.com/MusicalScalpel?pnref=lhc for protest songs about the environment and the 1%

13. Valley Conservation Council: http://www.valleyconservation.org/

14. NorthEast Neighborhood Association: http://www.nenava.org/

15. April Moore: http://aprilmoorestatesenate.com/

16. Charles Hendricks: https://harrisonburgarchitect.wordpress.com/charles-hendricks/

17. Doug Holt: www.brandclimate.org

September 14, 2015, Press Release

For more information, call or text Melinda Tuhus at 203.623.2186 (back-up number is Ted Glick, 973.460.1458)

FERC Fasters Enter Second Week; Welcome Franciscans to Fasting in D.C.

The dozen members of Beyond Extreme Energy (BXE) who began fasting on September 8, calling on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to stop issuing permits for fracked gas pipelines, export terminals and other infrastructure, are entering the second week of their 18-day, water-only fast. They say FERC’s actions exacerbate our climate crisis and devastate communities, since methane (the main ingredient of natural gas) is a powerful global warming gas.

They can be found sitting on chairs or talking to FERC employees and passersby from 7 a.m. each weekday morning until 6 p.m. outside FERC headquarters, 888 First St. NE in D.C.

After they leave the FERC building tonight (Monday), the BXE fasters will head to McPherson Square (15th and K St NW), where a dozen members of the Franciscan Action Network began their own fast today in preparation for the arrival of Pope Francis in the city later this month. Francis, who takes his name from St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order, will address a joint session of Congress on Sept. 24. His recent encyclical, Laudato Si, On Care for Our Common Home, focuses on the need to reverse climate change, with its disproportionate impact on the world’s poor.

On Sunday night, BXE faster Steve Norris punched three more holes in his belt, “so my jeans don’t fall off,” said the 72-year-old from Asheville, N.C. Other fasters are pulling the string holding up their pants a little snugger. They are being joined by others every day, some of whom come to FERC, others who fast in their own communities.
They plan to break their fast on Friday, Sept. 25 with a procession around FERC, and leaders from various faith traditions deliver copies of the Pope’s encyclical to the five FERC commissioners.

Today, in addition to the FERC-focused cards they’ve handed out every day, BXE fasters and their supporters passed out cards saying “Black Lives Matter” on the front, with an explanation on the back that climate change – driven in part by all the approvals granted by FERC – impacts low-income communities and communities of color “first and worst.” Hurricane Katrina is just one tragic example.

www.beyondextremeenergy.org

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From the Virginia Sierra Club:

Join Us for the Moral Action on Climate Justice Rally
Thursday, September 24, 2015
On the National Mall – Between 4th & 7th Streets, NW, Washington, DC

The Pope visits DC on Thursday, September 24, 2015, and hundreds of thousands are expected to come to DC to participate in the Moral March for Climate Justice. Buses will be leaving from Nelson County and Staunton. On this historic day, as Pope Francis addresses a joint session of Congress, we will gather in support of his call for urgent action to address the climate crisis and create a new future of economic equality, social justice, and environmental equity.

Pope Francis’s encyclical echoes what those in the Climate Justice Movement already know – climate justice is not about trying to solve an abstract climate problem. Climate justice is about local communities campaigning for rights and just outcomes in their communities- health, fair housing, positive economic opportunities, transportation, cultural preservation, food security, clean air, safe water, green energy, resiliency, and harmony between Man and Mother Earth. As Indigenous activist Clayton Thomas-Muller has stated, the climate justice movement is about: “Not simply demanding action on climate, but demanding rights-based and justice-based action on climate that … amplifies the voices of those least responsible and most directly impacted.”

Bus Routes:
• Route 1 will start in Staunton at 5:00 am with buses going up I-81, stopping at Harrisonburg
• Route 2 will start in Nelson County at 5:00 am with buses going up Route 29

We have reserved 4 buses. Please place your ticket order for the route that is most convenient to your location. Purchase tickets early please.
Link for ticket reservations: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/moral-action-for-climate-justice-rally-tickets-18280688030

Bus stop locations will be announced 1 week before departure.

For more information, contact Kirk Bowers, Sierra Club pipeline issues organizer: kirk.bowers[at]sierraclub.org

With an emphasis on climate change issues, ethics reform and big corporate influence concerns, April Moore is running against three-term 26th District State Senator Mark Obenshain.

April Moore announced her candidacy on March 8, 2015, at the Rockingham County Administration Building in Harrisonburg. Watch it here:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQiyA45-hkM]

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Bob Corso interviewed April for WHSV’s 1on1 on July 14, 2015. Watch it here:

Mark Obenshain had his turn with Bob Corso on July 17. Click on the image at right to view this 1on1 interview.

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WMRA’s Andrew Jenner covered April’s candidacy announcement on March 17, 2015, here: Shenandoah Co. Writer & Activist to Challenge Sen. Obenshain.

Martha Woodroof interviewed April for WMRA’s The Spark on August 15, 2013: The Earth Connection.

The election is on November 3, 2015.

CAAV member and former steering committee chair Les Grady presented a talk about climate change at the Massanutten Regional Library, downtown Harrisonburg, on Monday, April 20, 2015, entitled Help! My Planet’s in Trouble and I Don’t Know What to Do.

The Daily News-Record‘s Elaina Sauber was there along with photographer Nikki Fox. The below article was published in the Daily News-Record on Tuesday, April 21, 2015.

Climate Change Talk Hopes to Educate

by Elaina Sauber

HARRISONBURG – Les Grady thinks the first step to slowing down climate change is simply talking about it.

“Bringing up climate change in a polite society stops the conversation,” said Grady, member of the steering committee for the advocacy group Climate Action Alliance of the Valley. “We just don’t want to think about it, because we feel really helpless.”

The licensed professional engineer, who has taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson universities, spoke to about 30 people Monday about addressing and alleviating the effects of climate change to commemorate Earth Day, which is Wednesday. The event was held at Massanutten Regional Library’s main branch in Harrisonburg.

Grady has also worked part time for the last two decades for CH2MHILL, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm.

While 97 percent of climate scientists agree that warming trends of the last century are likely due to human activities, he said, a new study from Yale University shows that only 52 percent of Americans are concerned about climate change.

Skeptics argue that the Earth experiences natural shifts in climate, and any perceived changes aren’t being driven by the burning of fossil fuels.

Grady said the first thing to recognize when it comes to climate change is that a variety of research sources confirm its existence – not just temperature records.

“In fact, temperature records are probably the least reliable in the sense of indicators,” he added, due to natural variability and the fact that only about 1 percent of the Earth’s heat is in the atmosphere.

The oceans contain most of the planet’s heat. According to research from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, oceans’ heat content has risen almost continually since the mid-1990s.

Accepting climate change as reality also means accepting the role carbon dioxide plays in exacerbating it, Grady said.

As rising carbon dioxide levels contribute to higher temperatures, precipitation and sea levels also increase, Grady said.

“The more carbon we put into the atmosphere, the warmer it’s going to be,” he said.

Developing countries in Africa, South America and Indonesia are more vulnerable to issues stemming from climate change because they don’t have the economic resources to deal with the problems it presents, Grady said.

“Many people say this is a moral and ethical question, because their contributions to the problem are negligible – they haven’t emitted very much carbon dioxide,” Grady said.

Grady listed steps people can take to help address climate change in their own lives.

In Virginia, he said, transportation is the major source of carbon dioxide emissions, followed by electricity generation through the burning of coal. While anyone can make changes to their transportation and electricity use, Grady said the political process is crucial in persuading energy providers to follow suit.

“We as citizens need to be active,” he said. “State electric generators really have not done very much, nor are they planning to, about this problem.”

He also encouraged attendees to calculate their carbon footprint using programs found on the Environmental Protection Agency’s website.

But the main course of action Grady advocates is implementing a carbon fee and dividend.

“We allow all of us to dump the waste from burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere,” he said.

A better solution, he said, is to charge households a fee commensurate with the impact of their carbon footprint, “so that when we buy it, we’re not socializing those costs anymore; they become privatized, just like the profits are.”

Contact Elaina Sauber at 574-6278 or esauber@dnronline.com

Press release March 17, 2015

Public Weatherization meeting planned for Thursday, March 26, at 7:00pm at Simms Center.

Low- to moderate-income households often have a hard time balancing the costs of high utility bills with other necessities like food and medical care, especially during winters as hard as the one we just had. Joni Grady of the Climate Action Alliance of the Valley has announced that the Weatherization H/R subcommittee is working with the NorthEast Neighborhood Association, Community Housing Partners (CHP) of Waynesboro, and other local groups to begin to address this problem.

Through the federally-funded Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Development (DHCD), Community Housing Partners’ weatherization services reduce energy costs for families by improving the energy efficiency of their homes, while also looking for and eliminating related health and safety issues.

According to Bill Beachy, VP of the CHP Energy Solutions division, an audit team completes an on-site energy audit of a home that includes a blower-door air leakage test, heating system safety and efficiency check, duct leakage examination, and estimation of insulation needs. Following the energy audit, CHP’s weatherization team performs repairs and improvements to home heating and cooling systems and provides for the installation of energy-saving measures in the house, such as improved insulation and air sealing.

CHP’s weatherization services are for low-income families, particularly for households with elderly residents, individuals with disabilities, and families with children. Households are typically qualified based on income and recipients must be residents of the state of Virginia.

Meghan McMillen and Karen Vincent from the Waynesboro CHP office will explain the program at the public meeting Thursday evening, March 26th at 7:00. Karen Thomas, head of the NorthEast Neighborhood Association urges any residents who believe they might qualify to come to the Simms Center, 620 Simms Avenue, Harrisonburg, to learn about the program and how to apply for it.

Let’s build an energy efficient middle school that saves us all money!
And let’s build a healthy vibrant learning environment for our children!

Please attend the Harrisonburg City Council meeting                                    Tuesday, February 11, 7:00PM

Here’s the scoop:

The City is building a new middle school and renovating Thomas Harrison Middle School.  These projects are expected to cost over $40 million dollars.  When spending money on public buildings, the City should spend dollars on energy efficiency and energy production  (solar and geothermal) that will reduce energy use in the buildings.  The city will do this if enough of us ask for it.

>>> Please plan on attending the City Council meeting next week, Tuesday, February 11, 7:00 pm at Council Chambers at 409 S. Main Street.

During the public comments session, which is very early on the agenda  (so be there by 7:00 pm) people who are City residents should go to the microphone and urge the City Council to allocate money for schools that are efficient and healthy buildings.  If you are not comfortable speaking in public, please show up to lend your support.  Let’s fill the council chambers so they get the point.

The talking points include any of the following ideas, some of which are the same concept just discussed in more detail:

• The City should spend money building a high performance building: an energy efficient building that is a healthy building where students can get a high quality education.  The buildings should use natural light, should be energy efficient, and should be full of healthy, comfortable spaces to work and learn in.
• Energy efficiency saves dollars.  The City should allocate more money in upfront costs to save operating costs in the future.
• Energy production – solar and geothermal should be used as a hedge against future energy costs.
• Locating a new middle school close to the high school is a good idea because of the savings that result from that proximity.
• A LEED certified energy efficient building contributes to the health and well being of the facility and those using it. LEED contributes to better indoor air quality, lower utility bills, and flexible vibrant spaces.
• We should be spending money on public building projects by discussing the energy per sq. foot of various designs, including energy efficiency measures and on-site energy production, computing the annual energy and maintenance costs for the different designs, and then comparing the annual cost savings to the debt servicing cost of the difference in initial cost of the designs
• The life cycle cost of a building should be used to determine how to spend our tax dollars.  Whether paying for debt servicing or paying for utility or maintenance costs, the money each year comes from our budget.  A higher initial capital cost for a building that results in greater cost savings in the future is a wise choice.

Please come out and ask the City Council to do what should be done.

The way to get them to do this is to show up and tell them what we want!

More about this campaign here.

“The decision to actively, deliberately, and peacefully disobey specific laws or rules can play an important role in any social movement, just as other tactics such as lobbying, electoral work, and public education play important roles. Civil disobedience reflects core American values first articulated by Henry David Thoreau and used effectively by abolitionists, suffragists, and in the civil rights movement by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and others.” – Sierra Club’s President Allison Chin and Executive Director Michael Brune on the Sierra Club’s recent suspension of its 120 year old policy against civil disobedience. They were arrested along with 46 other environmental leaders at the White House on February 13, 2013 during an organized protest against inaction on climate change.

Tim DeChristopher’s story of civil disobedience and subsequent prison time is documented in a film released last year and coming to Court Square Theater (CST, tickets are $6 in advance or at the door) on Earth Day 2013:  Bidder 70.  “On December 19, 2008 Tim DeChristopher disrupted a highly disputed Utah BLM Oil and Gas lease auction, effectively safeguarding thousands of acres of pristine Utah land that were slated for oil and gas leases. Not content to merely protest outside, Tim entered the auction hall and registered as bidder #70. He outbid industry giants on land parcels (which, starting at $2 an acre, were adjacent to national treasures like Canyonlands National Park), winning 22,000 acres of land worth $1.7 million before the auction was halted.”

The April 22 CST showing is the day after Tim DeChristopher’s scheduled release from prison on April 21, 2013.  “After screening Bidder 70,… we will be part of a nationwide SKYPE Q&A with Tim from the Tower Theater in Salt Lake City.”

DeChristopher’s actions were an inspiration to over 1200 climate change activists who were arrested in August 2011 at the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. CAAV founder Cathy Strickler, her husband Charlie and CAAV members Laura and Bishop Dansby were among this dedicated group.

On March 21 “religiously and spiritually rooted Americans of all traditions … gather(ed) at the White House for a moral act of loving nonviolent civil disobedience,” as organized by Interfaith Moral Action on Climate. Valley resident and CAAV member April Moore writes about her experience of being among the 15 arrested at this event in Thoughts from a Climate Jailbird for fiftyoverfifty.org.

Fifty Over Fifty is a new effort by Lawrence MacDonald of Washington, D.C. who says his organization “is an appeal to a small number of boomers — members of the US baby boom generation — to engage in peaceful civil disobedience to push for sensible climate policies in the hope that this can help to avert catastrophe.  We call this effort 50 over 50 x 50 because we believe that members of our generation (over 50 years old)  have the means and the responsibility to act and that a few dozen of us in each of the 50 states (50 x 50) can tip public opinion in favor of action if  we are prepared to organize at the grassroots level, speak out, risk arrest and occasionally spend some time in jail.”

The need for action on climate change is seeing increasing use of civil disobedience to get attention. The upcoming Bidder 70 screening could be a perfect time for a community discussion on use of this controversial strategy. Courageous Leadership: Civil Disobedience and Climate Disruption has been planned by area groups to precede the showing of Bidder 70. This panel discussion will feature Sierra Club president Allison Chin.

Find the showing’s facebook event page here. Find the preceding forum’s facebook event page here.